St James's Theatre
Coordinates: 51°30′24″N 0°8′13″W / 51.50667°N 0.13694°W
St James's Theatre (est. 1835) was a 1,200-seat theatre located in King Street, at Duke Street, St James's, London. The elaborate theatre was designed with a neo-classical exterior and a Louis XIV style interior by Samuel Beazley and built by the partnership of Peto & Grissell for the tenor and theatre director, John Braham. The interior was decorated by the Frederick Crace Company.
The theatre opened on 14 December 1835 with a mixed programme of an operatic burletta, Agnes Sorel, starring Braham, and two farces by Gilbert Abbott à Beckett. In 1840, it changed its name to "Prince's Theatre", but changed it back in 1841. The theatre was rebuilt several times: in 1869, 1879-80. It closed on 27 July 1957 and was demolished and rebuilt as an office building.
Productions at the theatre included opera, Shakespearian readings, burlesques of opera, ballet, foreign plays, magicians, operetta and new plays. Braham's company struggled financially and after a few seasons he gave up. In 1842, John Mitchell took over the theatre, producing mostly French comedies and plays with the greatest stars of the French stage, and the theatre was a success and became fashionable for a dozen years, even being visited frequently by the Queen Victoria.
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